Motorola’s New ‘Designed by You’ Smartphone

Google-owned Motorola has announced the release of its newest smartphone, the Moto X.

The company placed an ad for the phone in several major American newspapers earlier today, timed to coincide with the build-up to American Independence Day. The advert plays up to American patriotism; that’s because it claims to be the first smartphone designed, engineered and assembled in the USA.

That’s not the only exciting feature of the Moto X. It also claims to be the first smartphone that you can design yourself. This appears to back up some rumours that have been circulating about this device for a while. Former Apple employee and new Google advisor Guy Kawasaki recently posted a video of a customisable car on his Google+ account, accompanied with the message “Wouldn’t it be great if you could personalise your phone like this?”

We blogged about the Moto X before. About a week ago, we expressed some disappointment at its weak specs: a 1.7 GHz dual processor, 2 GB Ram, 16 GB storage and a 720 pixel display. Clearly the customisable aspect of the phone will be quite limited; the Moto X advert doesn’t really give anything away. It may be that you can choose a colour or a range body designs before adding all the extras on top. We’d love to see 3D printers being used: Motorola could allow us to customise the casing with our own designs. Sadly that seems quite unlikely. It could have something to do with the mystery sensors we blogged about before.

We’ll probably see many more devices being built in the USA over the coming year; Apple will be making some of its iMacs in the USA, for example. While the move back to the US will please customers, the manufacturers will also benefit from lower transportation costs.

Catch a glimpse of the Independence Day Motorola ad over on TechRadar.